


i will stand in the dark with you

by druidforhire



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell, Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-09-25 21:02:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20378077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/druidforhire/pseuds/druidforhire
Summary: After Orpheus fails, Eurydice returns.She falls into the work, letting it consume her mind to stay ahead of the grief and the anger, ripping into rocks instead of her skull, choking on smoke the way she thinks she deserves. It's backbreaking labor and that's exactly what she wants. Gradually, though, she notices Hades begin to lighten his hand—the breaks are more numerous and take longer, the work less relentless (but difficult still). It's a comfort to know that their efforts weren't entirely in vain. Everyone around her is starting to look just a little bit clearer, and now she can recognize a few people. And on one of her breaks, she spots her.For some unfathomable reason, the girl sticks out to Eurydice. She seems possessed of an odd softness—of a care and grace that underlines the weariness and despair, like the silt between the river rocks.(Or: If Eurydice's a songbird, Sonya's a dove.)A collection of one-shots.





	1. day 1, 2, 3, 4

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Spend the winters by my side](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17664017) by [anamia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamia/pseuds/anamia). 

> Note: the chapters of this fic are prone to substantial edits. Nothing of the plot will change, but the prose will.

After Orpheus fails, Eurydice returns.

She falls into the work, letting it consume her mind to stay ahead of the grief and the anger, ripping into rocks instead of her skull, choking on smoke the way she thinks she deserves. It's backbreaking labor and that's exactly what she wants. Gradually, though, she notices Hades begin to lighten his hand—the breaks are more numerous and take longer, the work less relentless (but difficult still). It's a comfort to know that their efforts weren't entirely in vain. Everyone around her is starting to look just a little bit clearer, and now she can recognize a few people. And on one of her breaks, she spots her.

For some unfathomable reason, the girl sticks out to Eurydice. She seems possessed of an odd softness—of a care and grace that underlines the weariness and despair, like the silt between the river rocks. That's the first thing she notes.

Then she starts seeing her everywhere. After spotting her that first time, Eurydice starts realizing just how often they cross paths, though she'd never paid any attention before. She spots her on her way to work; she spots her passing by when she's working the furnaces, she spots her only a short way down from where she's been spending her newfound free time. There are no other faces she can recall except hers.

The first time Eurydice gets to "talk" to her is in Persephone's speakeasy, where the girl's nursing the fruits of a northern summer in a glass, her head bent low. Eurydice doesn't order anything and slips into the seat across. She waits.

Nothing happens. Eurydice can't tell if the girl is ignoring her or really hasn't noticed her. There's an odd feeling that holds her back from speaking, as if simply being around were the right way to introduce herself, rather than saying hello properly—like any noise would spook her, as if she were an abandoned dove with a broken wing, or a kitten under a car. (Though Eurydice gets the feeling that she is stronger than either of those. Or, perhaps, they have as much strength as her.)

When the whistle blows to get back to work, they both leave without having said a word.

* * *

The second time Eurydice approaches her, it is the exact same thing. She finds her in the speakeasy and sits across from the girl.

She's not sure why she's doing this again. After last time, she ought to know better: that the girl in front of her didn't know nor want her, and that she shouldn't waste her time with someone else who was probably just as jaded with the world as her, and still her legs carried her to her without consulting. This time she's got grassfields in her glass.

Eurydice's leg bounces impatiently, but the girl in front of her remains still, except to lift her glass to drink. She doesn't ever give Eurydice a sign of acknowledgement. Stubbornly, or maybe recklessly, she stays, her eyes flicking from the top of her redhaired head, to where Persephone is lounging on top of the bar counter, to the patrons, to the shelves, and back again. She catches Persephone's curious eye; who lifts her glass, tilts her head, eyes flicking to the one in front of her. Eurydice only shakes her head. _No, I don't need any help. _The goddess shrugs and goes back to lounging.

The whistle blows. They leave.

* * *

The third time, Eurydice is there before the girl.

The minute they're let out to break, she takes off to the speakeasy and takes a seat, one table off from where the girl sits. She's not sure why.

Her heart is bucking in her chest, waiting to see that redhaired girl crest over the hill and come up the path. An unspeakable agitation moves in when she does spot her. It feels like she's breaking a wild horse, doing this, but it's nothing like that at all; it's not the same danger. Eurydice may be the ranger on the cautious approach, but the girl is not a thousand pounds of devil waiting to dash brains on rocks, charging and running wild, stomping the earth under her feet. Maybe she is, and Eurydice's being a fool again.

When the girl orders her drink (autumn frost this time), she takes the seat across from her at the wrong table. 

Eurydice's chest swells with something close to pride. _I knew it,_ she thinks. The girl never lifts her head, but when the whistle blows, Eurydice leaves with a bold sense of vindication in her chest.

* * *

The fourth time this happens, she finally looks up. There's nothing special about her eyes.

Eurydice pounces on the chance to finally say something. She tries to speak, but the ash catches in her throat, and she has to cough out her lungs first, heaving out the charcoal. Her voice is unused to this. "Hello," she scratches out, the gravel sticking in her throat.

The girl looks at her.

"I've seen you around," she continues. Pauses. "I never got your name."

Her eyebrow quirks down in question. Eurydice doesn't continue.

The girl straightens up, and clears out her throat too, with plenty of hard harrumphs and hems into her elbow. It's weirdly graceful for an ungraceful act, the way she does it. It makes Eurydice feel improper; she'd had no such reservations.

"Sofia," she says. For some reason, the sound of her voice is unexpected. "I have seen you too. I'm sorry I haven't said anything."

She looks like she wants to say something else, but holds herself back. Eurydice waits, with a look imploring her to continue, but she shies away.

Time passes; eventually Sofia seems to realize that Eurydice won't continue until she does. So she says: "I thought that maybe you were lost. Looking for someone interesting, and that you would not find it in me. I didn't want you to leave." 

"I think I'll like to talk to you first—... _Sofia._"

Her brow screws together. "Actually—please, you must call me Sonya. It's strange when other people say it."

She speaks with a strange tilt in her words, an accent from a place Eurydice's not entirely familiar with. There's... whatever her home language is, it is heavy, but beautiful; broad and rolling and slightly clipped, which is strange to hear on a woman who seems so feather-light, but not unwelcome. She prefers it.

"Sonya?"

"It's a nickname."

Strange, but she won't question it. "I'm Eurydice."

"Lovely name."

A voice in her head echoes, _Your name is like a melody,_ and she tries not to wince. "I've been told."

She ponders this for a moment. Eurydice watches her face as she looks out the window, thinking, before Sonya turns to her. "Eurydice, why did you choose me to sit by?"

"I don't know," she answers. It's unhelpful, but it's true. She doesn't know why Sonya stood out to her so much. She doesn't know why she stubbornly pursued her, or why, of all things, she decided to sit silently in front of her until she was acknowledged. She can't explain it, but she supposes that's how things are; Orpheus couldn't explain why music was as easy for him as breathing or how he could cleave the skies with words alone, how the god of the underworld could bend at his knee. How he could choose her. She can't explain why she chose Sonya.

Sonya leans back in her chair. She doesn't smile, but her eyes lift, and Eurydice can see the crow's feet at the edges that speak of mirth and gentleness. "I see."


	2. day 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eurydice and Sonya talk language in the speakeasy.

They still don’t meet outside the speakeasy.

When Eurydice arrives, Sonya waves her over. “I finally realized where I have seen you before,” she says, speaking with a taut excitement. Eurydice can already feel herself shrinking back; she’s heard this before. “You are the poet’s wife, yes?”

“Only lover, actually. We never got to get married.” 

Sonya wilts. “Oh.”

Eurydice chews at her lip. She hates to have responded so coldly, but really, she doesn’t want to think about Orpheus—not now—and she doesn’t want Sonya to know any more than she might already. The others of the underground have already looked at her with mixed gazes, of jealousy for her proximity to the top through Orpheus and Persephone, or pity for her return, or admiration for what her lover had done, extended to her. She deserved none of it, and she certainly didn’t want any of it or anything else about it from_ her. _

“Do you speak another language?” Eurydice asks.

Sonya blinks. “What?”

“I mean—your accent. You don’t sound like you’re from… well, it doesn’t sound like English is your native.”

“It’s not,” she admits. “I have forgotten some of it, but at home, we speak French and Russian.”

“Did you know any English when you came down?”

“A little, but I wasn’t that good, really. Most of my English was learned down here.”

“You must’ve been here for a long time.”

“Maybe.” Sonya fingers the glass in front of her. “Time blurs down here when every day cycles in the same thing, with only the height of the wall for a calendar.”

Eurydice frowns. “It’s changing, though, haven’t you noticed? Our breaks are longer. People are looking around a little more.”

“Of course I have noticed.” Sonya considers her for a moment, then sighs. “This has happened before. Hades’ hand on our necks will pull away for a moment, but it always comes back. I hope your lover’s really made a difference this time, Eurydice.”

“He has,” she insists, despite everything. “He has.” 

Sonya doesn’t respond, just leans back in her chair with a tempered expression. Eurydice frowns. Fine, then. If she’s going to doubt, that’s just _ fine. _

But she’s unwilling to just let the conversation die between them. “Say something in French for me.”

Blink. “What?” 

“You said you knew French.”

“I—I do. That’s very sudden of you. I… well, I, uh… hm.” She lifts a hand under her chin, thinking. “Uh… well, _ I love you _ is _ je t’aime… thank you _ is _ merci. _”

“Russian?”

“Я люблю тебя and спасибо._ ” _

Eurydice leans back with her elbow over the back of the chair, drumming the tabletop with her other hand. This girl is trilingual—gods, that’s interesting, isn’t it? How’d she get to be this way? Far as she’s concerned, people really only learn one language and scraps of another; certainly with the way the surface is, wracked with struggle and poverty, there isn’t much room or reason to go about learning another language. Maybe the lucky few living comfortably enough could, but… well. Maybe it’s just because Hadestown hammered everyone into the same caste. But Sonya doesn’t look like she came from somewhere like that, and yet here she is, speaking three languages, and hell if Eurydice knows why she can speak French _and_ Russian. It seems like an awfully disjointed effort.

She gestures her head towards the bar counter. “What about that?”

“The bar? Still ‘bar’ for both.”

“Oh.” She casts another look around the place. “Glass?”

“_ L’ verre. _ рюмка _ .” _

“Chair.”

“_ Chaise. _ стул.”

“Table.”

“Still ‘table’ in French. In Russian, стол.”

“Um… patron?”

“Mm… _ client, _I believe. And покровитель … I think you see that French bears some similarities to English, as they both share quite a few roots in Latin. I apologize that my Russian is not quite as good.”

Eurydice shrugs. “I mean, it sounds pretty fuckin’ good to _ me. _ Actually, I think I like it more than the French.”

This seems to stun Sonya, who tilts her head, and the look she has on makes Eurydice wonder if she’d accidentally insulted her or something. She doesn’t _ think _ she did. “What?”

“Russian is a peasant language,” she replies. “The nobles all speak French, and perhaps sometimes English or Latin or such. I’m… surprised, is all.”

“_ ‘Peasant?’ _ How old are you?”

“… If I were anyone else, I might consider that rude.”

“Sorry. I mean—do you know what year it was when you came down?”

She shakes her head slowly. “I couldn’t tell you for certain, and I couldn’t tell you how long I have been here either. Only that it has been a very long time.”

“How long is a ‘long time,’ though? A hundred years, a thousand…?”

“It has not been _ quite _ a thousand years. … I think.” Sonya frowns, putting a hand to her chin.

“Sounds like it’s been a _ while, _ though. Peasants haven’t been around since… gods, I don’t know, knights and shit?”  
  
Sonya shakes her head. “ _ Gods _ no, no, I am not _ so _ far back, I know that much. My time had pistols and rifles and gunpowder.”

“Cannons too?” 

“Yes.”

“Then… that sounds like the 1700s, I think. It's been two hundred and thirty years since, about.”

Sonya deflates in all the little ways, then. Her shoulders slump; her brows crease; her frown turns deeper; her lashes hood over her eyes. Eurydice imagines that suddenly putting to numbers her sentence is heavy, no doubt, but she wonders if there's something besides that that bothers her. Family left behind, perhaps. Wonder for what the world is now. Despair that she's missing it. Maybe, maybe.

“Is something wrong?”

“Maybe.” Sonya is quiet, looking down at the glass she fiddles between her fingers.

Eurydice frowns and wishes she could figure out what kind of process she’s going through in her head, what kind of words she says to herself. What she reasons to come out and say some kind of wilted non-committal _maybe._

Well.

She draws out of conversation. Patrons whirl around them, filing in and out or lingering in the speakeasy; they order their drinks, the band plucks and taps their instruments, and Persephone is taking up a quarter of the counter space and no one can tell her to get off. It’s her place, after all, and they all want what she has. Eurydice watches Persephone chat lazily with the barkeep and swing a mic by the cord in her hand. It’s easy and lazy and she cannot make out a word out of the noise of the patrons.

The barkeep goes back to tending the bar and Persephone leans back to browse the speakeasy, and her eyes catch hers. Eurydice watches her glance between her, then Sonya’s bent head and the nothing happening between them, then gestures to Sonya again in question. 

She doesn’t know what’s up with her trying to wingman, but Eurydice shakes her head. She wants to do this by herself.

When she looks back at Sonya, she’s staring at her. “You two seem close.”

Blink. “I guess so.”

“Why is that?”

She sighs and shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s nothing special, I mean—Orpheus… he’s the one she loved, like he was her nephew or something. I was just his lover. It’s got nothing to do with me.”

Sonya looks at her close, with a hardness. “I think it might.”

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to @supercantaloupe (AO3 & tumblr) and @damondaunnodyke/@thepinballer (tumblr, AO3) for helping me write this.


End file.
